


Take the Reins

by Trinary



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Consensual Mind Control, Gay Robots, M/M, Sex Pollen, Starscream has an existential crisis, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Trust Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary
Summary: Wheeljack accidentally doses himself with homemade interfacing nanites. Fortunately, Starscream is on hand to keep his spark from burning out. When it turns out the nanites are so much more than charge enhancers, Starscream can’t help but take advantage… Which is exactly why Wheeljack came to him in the first place.
Relationships: Starscream/Wheeljack
Comments: 8
Kudos: 141
Collections: Kinks in the Wires (A free 18+ Transformers weird kinks fanzine)





	Take the Reins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kinks In The Wires TF Zine! Please enjoy while you shelter from (gestures vaguely at 2020) all of that.

“You invented an interfacing virus?” Starscream asks, pitch rising. “You invented an interfacing virus and _tested it on yourself?_ ”

Wheeljack raises placating hands, each scarred and pitted with millennia of exactly this kind of disregard for his own safety. “In my defense, I didn’t do it on purpose. And it isn’t a virus, it’s a self-replicating nanite swarm.”

Starscream shoots him an incredulous look.

Wheeljack winces. “Okay, so maybe that isn’t better.”

“Of course it isn’t _better!_ ”

Starscream leans back in his chair, pinches the bridge of his nose to ward off his incipient helmache, and wonders for the millionth time how he gets himself into these situations. Running a planet should be all galas and adulation. Instead it’s equal parts mind-numbing paperwork and disasters, each more absurd than the last. Wheeljack infecting himself with some bit of half-baked funtime code is only the third most ridiculous thing to happen this decacycle. 

Whatever it’s supposed to do, Starscream needs it gone. Wheeljack is one of the only true allies he has—which is definitely the only reason the thought of leaving him addled and helpless makes Starscream’s spark clench. He can’t afford to have Wheeljack compromised. “How long until it’s fixed?”

Wheeljack’s wince deepens. His finials light an embarrassed yellow-green.

Alarm pulls Starscream’s backstrut straight. “You _can_ fix it, can’t you?”

“Uh,” Wheeljack says. “Well, about that.”

Which is how Starscream finds himself leading Wheeljack to his quarters so he can clang Wheeljack’s bolts off before his spark melts through its casing.

Even as they make the journey, he watches Wheeljack’s internal temperature creep up on infrared. Typical of Wheeljack’s projects, the nanites ramping up his charge have no idea where to stop. If allowed to replicate unimpeded they’ll lead to a messy (if enjoyable) final offlining.

“I can’t believe you’re supposed to be a genius,” Starscream complains. “How did you survive the war at all? Did you spend so long making weapons you forgot how to build anything else?”

“Hey, I’m close to working out the kinks. Ha, _kinks_. Like ninety percent of the way there.”

“ _Ninety percent_ doesn’t count in anything but aerial bombardments, _Wheeljack_.”

“I told you, I’ll be fine. Especially with you around,” Wheeljack says. “Trip the failsafes, short the nanites with a nice hard overload, and everything’s back to normal.”

Starscream—who isn’t sure how much he trusts Wheeljack’s scientific expertise at the moment—shuts the door behind them and mutters under his breath about what he thinks of Wheeljack’s failsafes. When he’s checked and triple-checked the door is locked, he turns. It’s strange to see Wheeljack among the scattering of his things. He’d meant to have the space decorated but never had the time. Suddenly it matters very little that these were once Primal apartments, not when they’re so bare; there’s nothing to show off but the view.

Speaking of views: Wheeljack’s plating flares, heat-haze shimmering from his seams, shadowed glimpses of wiring and protoform on enticing display. Starscream smirks, back on firmer ground. Nanites aside, this isn’t anything they haven’t done before in closets or storerooms, once or twice or twenty times. Just never in anyone’s quarters. Never with anyone’s spark on the line.

“Eager, are we?” Starscream circles Wheeljack’s overheated form and goes in for the kill. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ruse to get me alone? Not that I object. You can’t wait to get your hands on me—oof!”

Wheeljack pins him to the wall, optics bright and glassy, plating scorching. The air leaves Starscream’s vents in a whoosh. Wheeljack’s touch is everywhere, his face buried in the juncture of Starscream’s neck and shoulder, and nanites or not, Starscream’s charge skyrockets at the evidence of Wheeljack’s need. It’s good to be wanted.

“It’s stronger than I expected.” Wheeljack’s voice rumbles low and rough-edged, heat rolling off him and fans running like Starscream’s been teasing him for joors already. “ _Primus_ , I want to frag you.”

“What does it feel like?” Starscream asks, morbidly curious.

“Driving without brakes.” Wheeljack’s faceplate retracts to expose his scarred mouth. He drags his teeth up the cables of Starscream’s throat. Starscream gasps. Wheeljack does it again, slower, his tongue retracing his path and marking the sharp line where Starscream’s jaw meets his helm. “Without knowing what brakes _are_. I’d recommend it if not for the whole, you know.”

“Burnout thing?”

“That.”

Wheeljack nips harder, possessive. Starscream’s breath hitches. Pleasure jolts up his backstrut. Wheeljack’s spark may be burning but his spike is perfectly healthy, as Starscream learns when it nudges his thigh thick and heated, its tip already pearled with transfluid. His panel snaps back embarrassingly quickly. Wheeljack’s fingers waste no time in bracketing Starscream’s swollen node, rolling and teasing.

Never let it be said Wheeljack goes half-measures. If anything he’s _too_ efficient. Starscream’s charge builds so fast it almost hurts. He overloads on Wheeljack’s hand, gasping and cursing, empty valve clenching. Wheeljack hardly gives him a rest before he starts again, merciless. Starscream jolts, oversensitive. His wings smack the wall. “Wait, give me a klik, _stop—“_

And Wheeljack stops.

He more than stops. He freezes solid, optics fixed, joints locked like someone’s hit him with an immobilizer. For a moment Starscream’s sure the nanites have somehow killed him right there—except Wheeljack’s optics are lit, his finials flushed red, his fans thundering. Starscream stares, then squirms out of Wheeljack’s hold and walks a bewildered circle around him. Poking Wheeljack produces no result. Setting a hand against his plating lets him feel the furnace heat leaching up from beneath, and Wheeljack’s engine throttles up at his touch. Still, he doesn’t move.

Starscream understands all at once. He bites the inside of his cheek to stop the grin that threatens to split his face, lightheaded with the magnitude of what Wheeljack has handed him. He really should have asked what the nanites were _for_.

Finding out this way is almost better.

“So this is what you were building,” Starscream purrs. “Not a simple little charge inducer at all, is it?”

“No,” Wheeljack agrees, like he can’t help himself.

“I never imagined you had such... Desires. One little word from me and you can’t move at all.” Starscream runs a hand up Wheeljack’s back. Wheeljack shivers with leashed tension. _Starscream’s_ leash, his to pull or slacken as he likes. “Tell me, Wheeljack. _Exactly_ how long do we have until those nanites get the better of you?”

“Ah,” Wheeljack says, the hint of uncertainty in his voice, optics unfocused as he consults his internal readouts. “Six joors, forty-seven kliks, twenty-two astroseconds—”

“And you let me believe you were dying right this moment! That wasn’t very nice of you. I think you should apologize for worrying me.”

“I’m sorry, Starscream.”

It’s instant. Automatic. Starscream thrills with that absolute control and lets a claw dip between Wheeljack’s plates to tug a sensitive wire as a reward. Wheeljack groans. Starscream really should focus on the _life and death_ part of this, but what is he supposed to do? _Not_ have a little fun at Wheeljack’s expense?

“I know you,” Starscream says. “Almost seven joors is more than enough time for you to fix the problem on your own. I think you wanted me to find out what you’d done to yourself.” Starscream tugs that wire a little further. Wheeljack’s engine revs, a tremor running through his plating. “That’s dangerous, you know. I can do whatever I want. If I tell you to stop, you stop—what if I tell you to get on your knees and suck my spike?”

Wheeljack’s fans roar. “Please.”

“Hm.” Starscream puts a finger to his lips and pretends to think. How far can he push this? How far does it _go?_ “No, ask nicely. Call me _Lord Starscream._ ”

“Please let me suck your spike, Lord Starscream,” Wheeljack begs, eager and breathless, with not a trace of irony.

Starscream’s spark does something swooping and complicated. What does that slow crawl of nanite reprogramming feel like, no matter how temporary? Can Wheeljack sense it happening, Starscream’s commands translated to imperative? It is like Starscream touching him from the inside?

“Kneel,” Starscream orders before he can think too hard.

Wheeljack folds like someone’s cut his cables. His knees hit the floor with a strut-rattling crash, spike bobbing, valve swollen and drooling a line of bright lubricant down his inner thigh. His biolights pulse in hypnotic rhythm as if to draw Starscream in. Starscream obliges, running his clawtips feather light up Wheeljack’s ventral plating, then down to the base of his spike. He circles it but doesn’t touch. Wheeljack moans.

“Should I be noting your reactions down for science?” Starscream teases. “This is valuable experimental data, and you’ve made yourself such a willing subject.”

When Wheeljack opens his mouth to answer, Starscream pushes his thumb between Wheeljack’s lips and pins his tongue in place. His mouth is wet and inviting, his tongue velvety soft. Wheeljack sucks his fingers. Starscream’s spike pressurizes so fast it leaves him dizzy. It would be so easy to push forward into that welcoming heat. Instead he forces Wheeljack’s jaw wider, his thumb jammed at the corner of Wheeljack’s mouth, oral lubricant slicking his fingers. The tip of his spike nudges Wheeljack’s lips. Wheeljack’s tongue twitches as he struggles to close his mouth around it and can’t.

“Beg me for it,” Starscream says.

Wheeljack makes an inarticulate noise around Starscream’s hand, desperate, wanting. He strains for Starscream’s spike. Light pulses through Wheeljack’s finials, white and pink and ultraviolet. They make excellent grips. Wheeljack’s throat opens around Starscream’s spike like he’s made for it and he swallows Starscream to the root without a hint of hesitation, nose buried against Starscream’s pelvic span, his jaw stretched wide. Wheeljack’s hips jerk against nothing. Starscream pushes his leg between Wheeljack’s thighs and Wheeljack ruts against it helplessly, lubricant smearing on shiny red plating. Starscream can’t bring himself to care about the mess, too absorbed in Wheeljack’s laser-focused attention, the need in his optics, those scarred lips wrapped around his spike.

Starscream lifts his foot just enough to trap Wheeljack’s spike against his thruster. He rubs back and forth, rim catching Wheeljack’s glowing node. Wheeljack moans.

“You should thank me for saving your life.” Starscream forces his voice steady. “Say, _Thank you, Lord Starscream._ ”

Wheeljack’s throat works as if he’s trying to speak. No sound comes out, not around Starscream’s spike. Starscream feels the words as vibration, begging him, thanking him, _praising_ him. Charge snaps over his plating and he spills down Wheeljack’s throat so deep Wheeljack has no choice but to swallow. Wheeljack’s hips buck as he follows Starscream into overload, stripes of transfluid marking Starscream’s glossy paint.

Starscream staggers back, knees wobbly as his system resets. His softening spike falls free of Wheeljack’s lips. He sinks strutless to the floor in a haze, fans shedding heat. Wheeljack coughs, and Starscream would feel bad for being rougher than he’d meant if he had the processing power to remember his own name.

“You should have lab accidents more often,” Starscream says when he’s more than an overload-stunned collection of microchips. “That was… _Primus_.”

“Thank you, Lord Starscream,” Wheeljack says, wrecked and raw.

Starscream rolls onto his front. _Lord Starscream_ had sounded good in the throes of passion, so to speak, but in the cold light of day it’s faintly embarrassing. It feels like a validation of everything everyone says about him behind his back. It doesn’t matter that it’s technically true— _Emperor Perpetua_ and so on—he’s handed Wheeljack enough ammunition to tease him until the end of time. Ugh, why had he even said it? Maybe if he never mentions it again, neither will Wheeljack.

“Did that fix your little problem?” Starscream asks.

“No.” Wheeljack—panels hanging open, plating flared, a streak of Starscream’s lubricant on his lip—gazes into the middle distance. “Six and a half joors remaining until a catastrophic spark containment breach, Lord Starscream.”

_“What?_ ” Starscream leaps upright. “Why didn’t it—why are you still calling me—”

Understanding washes over him like all the weight of Earth’s cold oceans. He hasn’t fixed anything. The runaway nanites are still multiplying in Wheeljack’s systems, the stupid things unknowingly in pursuit of their own demise. Wheeljack is as far under their influence as ever, and here Starscream is, doing nothing about it.

“Just Starscream is fine,” Starscream says hurriedly. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t it work?”

“There must not have been enough charge to short the nanites.” Wheeljack frowns. “We could try again?”

“There’s no guarantee it would work.” Starscream sets to pacing before the windows overlooking ruined Iacon, all his post-overload lassitude forgotten in the face of the countdown clock with Wheeljack’s name on it. How reliable is Wheeljack’s failsafe? As reliable as that _ninety-percent-fixed_ burnout problem? They _could_ try again, but will it be enough? Can _he_ be enough?

Has all they’ve done been a waste of precious time?

Starscream spins on his heel. “I’m taking you to the medbay. We should’ve done that first instead of playing stupid interfacing games.”

Wheeljack looks pained. “I’d rather not explain this to Flatline.”

“We don’t even know how the nanites are affecting your processor! Why did you think it was a good idea to build a… A _mind control_ swarm? Why come to _me_ with it?”

“Because I trust you.”

Starscream freezes. Primus. _Primus_.

He can’t bring himself to look at Wheeljack. The world seems suddenly too big, its weight heavier than any crown. _His_ spark feels like the one melting down. Starscream is horribly conscious of how defenceless Wheeljack has made himself, how thoroughly he’s placed himself in Starscream’s hands—and Starscream had used it to make him beg. Like this there’s nothing Wheeljack can tell him but the truth, too vulnerable by half for anyone who’d ever been a wrecker.

And Wheeljack _trusts_ him.

Starscream makes a sound like steam escaping and sinks to the floor, hands over his face. “I can’t do this.”

“I kind of need you to,” Wheeljack says. “You know, so I don’t die.”

“You can’t trust me! I’m not a good person, Wheeljack. If I was, I would’ve sent you to Flatline to run a systems purge instead of—instead of going along with fragging your problems away! I could make you do anything! Don’t you understand that?”

“Of course.”

“Then _why_ —”

“I trust you,” Wheeljack repeats, like a bullet through Starscream’s spark. “You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want.”

“You’re compromised! You don’t know what you want!”

“It’s an overambitious recreational nanite colony, not mnemosurgery.” Wheeljack grunts as he rises, hands on his knees, thighs slick with his own fluids and already half-pressurized again under the nanites’ relentless influence. He crosses the floor to where Starscream slumps against his recharge slab. The rising heat of his frame buffets Starscream like sunlight. Starscream can’t make himself look at Wheeljack’s face, not without _I trust you_ ringing in his head like judgement.

“This was supposed to be a fun surprise.” Wheeljack sighs. “I guess I fragged that up.”

Starscream lifts his head. “You built me mind-control interfacing nanites as a _present?_ ”

“It sounds weird when you put it like that. I just noticed how you never relax, not around anyone. Not even me. I thought maybe if you were in control… I guess it was a dumb idea.” He scratches the back of his head, his finials a rueful off-white. “You’re right. We should go to the medbay. Glit can probably rig something up with a defibrillator.”

Starscream looks at Wheeljack and feels as if he’s teetering on a skyscraper’s edge, the wind on his wings urging him to tip forward and fall. The thought of Wheeljack building this for him is—Starscream doesn’t know _what_ it is, only that his fuel pump is thundering, his hands shaking, his spark hot and tight. He feels like the Emperor he is. He feels like he’s the one about to fall over and die.

Is this what it’s like to be in love?

Wheeljack begins to rise. Starscream catches Wheeljack’s hand and swallows twice before he can bring himself to speak. “Wait, we can fix this. I never fragged myself into a situation I couldn’t frag my way out of.”

“You sure?”

“What do we need to do?”

Wheeljack frowns thoughtfully. “The charge release needs to be stronger. It’s possible we weren’t in enough physical contact.”

_Physical contact, huh?_ It seems simple enough. Starscream opens his mouth to order Wheeljack onto the berth and hesitates.

He thinks again of _trust_ , and the tawdry fantasy of _Lord Starscream_ , and can’t bring himself to fall into it. If he thinks about it too hard, he’ll crack. It would be so much easier if he didn’t care, so much easier without the pressure of Wheeljack’s life riding on how well Starscream can blow his circuits. The responsibility of being able to make Wheeljack do _literally anything_ is paralyzing. The last thing he wants to do right now is make choices.

...Wait.

“Wheeljack,” Starscream says slowly. “This has all been about what I want. What about what _you_ want?”

“I want what you want,” Wheeljack says. “It’s sort of the point.”

“But it isn’t, is it? Using your clever little invention as nothing more than crude restraints shows a distinct lack of imagination.” When Starscream looks at it from that angle, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. There are things he’s sure Wheeljack wants, things he’s too nice to take—but Starscream isn’t nice. All it will take is a nudge. “I know I’m not the easiest mech to deal with.”

“You can be frustrating,” Wheeljack allows warily.

“I’m selfish, and thoughtless, and easily bored. I can only wonder how many times you’ve wanted to throw me across my desk just to shut me up.” As Starscream speaks, he lifts Wheeljack’s hand and presses it to his own throat, Wheeljack’s palm against his thrumming fuel conduits, fingers curled loosely around his cables. “To put me in my place. No?”

Wheeljack’s optics drop to Starscream’s throat and back up. His fingers twitch. Starscream shivers and leans in until it crimps his lines and leaves him lightheaded.

“Go on,” Starscream says. “All those things you’ve thought about but never done… Take what you want, Wheeljack. That’s an order.”

There’s stillness for the span of a held breath—then Starscream is face-down on his berth, the air driven out of him, Wheeljack’s weight on his back and his arms twisted up behind him. Starscream struggles reflexively, but he’s shed mass since the end of the war—guns, mostly—and Wheeljack is a solid block of blast armor and instrumentation.

Wheeljack knocks Starscream’s knees apart. In half a klik Wheeljack has Starscream aft up, legs spread, two fingers sunk in his clenching valve. Starscream’s fans roar back to life. He cries out and hitches his hips higher. “Wheeljack, please!”

“Thought this was about what _I_ want.” Wheeljack pins Starscream’s helm to the berth when he tries to raise it. His fingers feel huge in Starscream’s unprepared valve. Every thrust makes an obscene wet sound. He pulls his hand back glistening for Starscream to see. “Open your mouth.”

Starscream’s lips barely part before those fingers push inside, smearing the tang of his own lubricant across his tongue. Starscream moans around the intrusion. Wheeljack hisses low as Starscream wraps his tongue around them and sucks them clean. His plating feels furnace-hot on Starscream’s back, his grip hard enough to dent. His leaking spike brushes Starscream’s leg. Starscream strains for it and Wheeljack plunges hilt-deep in one hard stroke. Starscream cries out, wings snapping rigid, optics flaring. It burns so _good_. Wheeljack sets a punishing pace and all Starscream can do is hang on for dear life, claws digging furrows in his recharge slab, Wheeljack’s filthy promises in his audial.

Wheeljack pulls his fingers from Starscream’s mouth. Suddenly there’s nothing to muffle the sounds he’s making, but Starscream is beyond caring. All he wants is more, more, _more_.

“Selfish and thoughtless and greedy too, _Lord Starscream_ ,” Wheeljack tells him, and pinches Starscream’s node.

Starscream screams and overloads harder than he ever has in his life, white-hot pleasure and pain tearing through him as Wheeljack’s teeth dent his collar faring, as he thrusts once and twice more into Starscream’s fluttering valve and floods it with hot transfluid. Electricity crackles over his frame. His visual feed crashes into sparkles and static. When it comes back black-spotted and neon-glitching, he’s still trembling with the force of it. He smells burnt wiring. He thinks it’s his own.

Wheeljack lists sideways and topples to the berth. He lands in a heap of limbs, optics offline. Starscream stares dazedly at him in a cloud of post-overload sentimentality and thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

For a moment everything is still, nothing disturbing the silence but their whirring fans and the pinging of their overheated frames.

Wait, no. There was a point to all this.

Starscream props himself up on his elbow and casts a critical optic over Wheeljack’s chassis. It’s no good: he can’t tell if it worked just by looking. “Wheeljack?”

Wheeljack grunts.

“Call me Lord Starscream,” Starscream orders.

Wheeljack lights up one optic just to squint at him. “Huh?”

“Oh thank Primus.” Starscream’s helm falls back to the berth with a dull thunk. “The little scraplets have burned themselves out. I can’t take the pressure of knowing your spark depends on my amazing array.”

Wheeljack snorts. “I see _putting you in your place_ doesn’t work for long.”

“My place is on a throne with peons kissing my thrusters, Wheeljack.” Starscream stretches luxuriously, relishing every dent and crimped wire—slag, he’ll be feeling that for _cycles_ —and drapes himself over Wheeljack. Wheeljack’s plating is warm to the touch, and when he leans down to kiss him, he tastes himself still on Wheeljack’s lips. Wheeljack kisses back lazily.

They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. It’s the middle of the cycle, but they’re both wrung out and useless. Starscream feels only the faintest guilt at the thought of the paperwork piling up back in his office. What use is ruling a planet, after all, if he can’t take an afternoon off here and there to partake in self-indulgent debauchery?

“I suppose you could be among them if you like,” Starscream says, “but only so long as you test your inventions properly.”

“Why, are you volunteering as a subject?”

Starscream pauses. _Is_ he? He’s never seen the attraction in handing over control, but now he can’t help but wonder. “Maybe if you can promise it won’t make my spark explode.”

“Hey, I told you I almost have that fixed.” Wheeljack’s thumb dips into the seam beneath Starscream’s ventral turbine. Whatever Starscream had been about to say dissolves into a breathy intake of air, an electric shock all on its own. His exhausted body tries valiantly to gather itself for another round. Who knows, maybe his spark really _will_ explode from the strain. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

“What would you make me do?” Starscream can’t help asking.

“Hmm.” Wheeljack’s lips brush Starscream’s helm. “I think I’d have you hold yourself open all pretty for me, then see how many times I could tell you to overload before you dropped into stasis.”

Starscream’s mouth falls open. Heat floods his array. “It can _do_ that?”

“What was it you said about a distinct lack of imagination?” Wheeljack’s other hand finds Starscream’s panel and strokes it. “Open for me one more time, Starscream. I don’t need nanites to make you scream my name.”

And for a long while there’s no talking in the room at all.


End file.
